I attended a lecture the other day in which members of the audience were invited to ask questions. Several of them did so before the woman who was walking around with the wireless mic had a chance to reach them.
This was a ridiculous situation and it made me think that there must be a better approach. Even if each lecture theatres can’t be equipped with many such microphones, surely having someone physically carry one from place to place is the equivalent of having a man walk in front of your car carrying a red flag.
Today’s invention is a small wireless microphone embedded in a foam rubber ball. Audience members can then simply pass the mic around by throwing it to one another. This introduces an extra element of fun into ‘audience participation’.
This might work rather well in certain boardrooms where the rooms themselves are huge and the board members ill-disciplined enough to just talk without being invited to by the chairman. Such a microphone therefore imposes a certain order on proceedings, but without the legwork and delays associated with passing the device from hand to hand.
